Scattered Thoughts . . .

While the new bedroom is clean, I thought I should probably shoot a few photos... This new double bed sure does cover a lot of that beautiful new wood floor! I converted the bedroom door to a Dutch door... first, I marked where I needed additional hinges... I removed it from its hinges... I cut the door in half... since this is a hollow core door, I had to fill the now open ends with solid wood... added a little shelf to the lower half... added some decorative trim to match the rest of the house... painted it Colonial Red (a primer plus three top coats)... routed out for the new hinges... installed the new hinges... hung the new door... added Dutch door hardware to lock the bottom half to the top half... and, it is beautiful... This bedroom is the future location of my hobby room which will be mostly model railroading stuff with a workbench/desk. The room has been designed in an old train station style with quite a few train station details.  One such detail is the door to

A month or so ago, I wrote about seeing loons sporting different colored plumage. I saw loons with a band of deep green on their necks... I saw loons with a band of deep blue on their necks... I saw loons with a black band on their necks. That left me wondering and searching for a reason. I was initially wondering if this was a sign of maturity... adolescence... breeding... or nesting. It turns out it was none of the above. I've found that the appearance of green or blue or purplish bands on some loons is simply due variables such as the angle of the light, wet or dry feathers, and the color temperature of the light. For example, near dusk or near sunrise, the color temperature is a very warm orange or yellow yet the color temperature at high noon is a much colder blue. When you combine these varying lighting scenarios with the angle to wet feathers, you can see different colors.   Even when you hold a clean, fresh bird feather in your hand, you can oftentimes see a changing

Adam will be arriving for a relatively short visit from somewhere on the opposite side of our planet in the next few days so it has been a very busy couple of weeks around the house.  As the regular readers of this blog already know, we moved our master bedroom to Adam's old bedroom when he left for the Air Force. I tore that bedroom apart... aired it out for months... and rebuilt it completely to include a rebuilt closet, rebuilt shelving and desk, new flooring and a new wood plank ceiling. This bedroom has been exceptionally comfortable for Sheila and me! This heavy laminate wood flooring has a vapor barrier already adhered to the bottom of each plank so we were able to install this directly on top of the subflooring. The original, long term plan was to turn our old bedroom into a room for me to keep all my models... mostly trains... and to create a space which would be better suited for building and working on models rather than our kitchen table. This project, however